Thirty Five

~ Philadelphia, PA… Day three, concert #7 ~

Backstreet Boys on caffeine... That’s about as scary of a statement as Postal Workers with guns. You can’t possibly take five men in their twenties who are confined to small spaces like hotel rooms and tour busses and let them have a bottomless access to caffeine. Yet, that’s what nearly every venue that we’d traveled to did. Craft Service is not my friend. Well okay I take that back, Craft Service is a great thing when you’re starving and you walk into a room and there is a table of food sitting there begging to be picked at. But the never-ending supply of Coke and Mt. Dew on a Craft Service table is not my friend. People think that I’m bad on caffeine, but it’s nothing compared to my boys on the stuff.

I walked out of the group dressing room drenched in water and ran into Kevin, "Oh god what did they do to you?"

I rolled my eyes and held my shirt away from my body shaking water off onto the floor, "Fucking idiots attacked me with their water bottles!"

Kevin giggled, "I probably shouldn’t go in there then huh?"

I started walking down the hall, "Kevin they didn’t even have a reason! They just opened up new full bottles of water and started pouring them on me! I know I’ve been known to start shit, but good lord I was just sitting there! I swear if they don’t stop giving them caffeine I’m going to hurt someone."

"Where are you going?" Kevin asked as he followed me in my huff.

"I’m going to see if the souvenir stations are set up yet. I can’t walk around here in a wet shirt. Fucking hell…"

He laughed and I shot a look at him, "I’m sorry…it’s just that you’re kinda cute when you’re pissed like this… swearing and all…"

I rolled my eyes and shook my head, "Why did I agree to do this again?"

"Because you love us despite the fact that we’re a bunch of boys and you didn’t want to spend a year apart from your boyfriend. Oh and there’s also the fact that we’re paying you to do it…" he said and grinned.

I laughed, "Yeah because I sure as hell wouldn’t take this torture for free… I should have started charging you guys a long time ago! And my boyfriend… oh he’s SO sleeping on the couch tonight…"

"He didn’t…"

"Oh yes he did!" I practically yelled. "It was him, Howie and Brian!"

"Howie?"

"Yes! Short little fuck pouring water on me…"I mumbled. "I’m so going to get them back… they don’t know what they started…"

"Can I help?"

I looked up at him and grinned my evil grin, "Oh yeah…"

Kevin and I talked on the way to and back from the tee shirt stand and decided that the best revenge for me to take on the guys would be good old-fashioned campground torture. Between his being raised on a camp and the many years that I’d been shipped off to summer camp as a girl we had plenty of stupid tricks up our sleeves to annoy the three stooges who’d decided to gang up on me with their water. For some strange reason at the beginning of the tour I’d been given spare keys to all of the Boys’ busses. Even they didn’t have keys to their busses, but I did, and I used that to my advantage later that night after the concert.

We were headed from Pennsylvania to Washington DC the next morning, so when all of us were hanging out watching a movie after the concert Kevin and I snuck off under the façade that we were going to find microwave popcorn. All of the boys bought it, and we left without any hassle.

As we walked down the hall giggling I stopped off at my and AJ’s suite and grabbed a bag of supplies that I’d hid in the closet earlier that night. Marcus and Carlos walked behind us shaking their heads and I laughed, "You can’t tell anyone that you watched us do this, got me?"

"Yes ma’am…" Marcus smiled.

"Cause if you do tell, you’re subject to your own share of revenge… We know where you sleep too…" Kevin smiled.

"We’re not saying a word… you two are looking for popcorn, we were just following you for your own safety."

Kevin and I smiled, "I believe these two deserve a bonus on their next paycheck."

Once we made it to the busses, which were thankfully parked in a back lot where no fans could see or have access, we started our mission. I laughed so hard as we attended to the busses that I almost wet my pants, and Kevin was literally gasping for breath as he laughed. On Howie’s bus we short sheeted his bunk and smeared Vaseline in them knowing that as soon as we left town he’d be crawling into his bed trying to get some extra sleep. For Brian, who had a bladder weaker than a pregnant woman in her third trimester we saran wrapped his toilet, which would provide a real nice mess for him to contend with as the bus rocked its way down the highway. Then, for my dear boyfriend, we were horrible. First we short sheeted his bed too knowing that he’d want to go straight back to sleep once he got on the bus, and seeing that it was winter and he was a whine ass about the cold, I knew he’d get under the covers. Then we opened all of the sunroofs on the bus so that when he got in there it would be extra cold. We also smeared baby oil on random spots of the linoleum floors to lube them up and then poked a hole in the end of his toothpaste tube so that when he tried to use it he’d squirt toothpaste on himself. The best part though was that in all three busses we rigged up water balloons, large ones, to hang above the doorways of the bathrooms so that once the doors were opened all three of the fools would get doused.

I dumped my bag of supplies in a dumpster next to the busses after pulling out a handful of microwave popcorn packets looking at Kevin, Marcus and Carlos, "Well look what I found! Microwave popcorn! I guess we can go back to the room now huh?"

"Well I’d sure say so…" Kevin grinned and linked his arm with mine.

"Oh and, Kev?"

"Yeah?"

"I’m riding in your bus tomorrow…" I giggled.

"Good idea…"

~~~~~

AJ yawned as we stood outside of the busses and he pouted, "But I want cuddle with you…"

I shook my head and patted his cheek, "You’ll be fine. I have to spend time alone with each of you guys taking pictures… today is Kevin’s day to have me. It’s a short drive to DC, baby, you’ll get to cuddle me before you know it…"

He continued to pout and sighed, "Fine… but he better keep his hands off of your ass…"

I laughed and kissed him gently on the lips, "Go on…I’ll see you in a while…" I sent AJ on his way and then quickly made it onto Kevin’s bus. "Go go go…" I giggled to the bus driver who we’d warned that we needed to get moving as soon as I was on the bus. We’d figured that in the case that one of the guys discovered his prank before their bus started moving, they wouldn’t be able to catch up to us until we were to DC if we were the first ones to leave the lot. I looked out the window of the bus and laughed, "Oh god they’re going to kill us…"

"Yeah well they asked for it…" Kevin smiled from where he was sitting on the couch.

"True…" I smiled and sat down next to him kicking my shoes up and pulling my feet up onto the couch. "So how long you think before they show up on the CB?"

"Ten minutes tops… Brian will probably be first…maybe Howie…"

I giggled and nodded, "Yeah… we probably should warn Nick huh? They might automatically think it’s him since he’s known to prank during tours…"

"True…" Kevin laughed. "So I see you two are talking again?"

"Yep. We had breakfast yesterday together. Kind of came to the conclusion that he’s gotta stop shutting down like that with me and tell me what’s on his mind instead of holding it all in until he blows up."

"What did he say to that?"

"He agreed… told me that he was sorry and that he’d deserved to be smacked on his birthday and that I had good reason to yell at him in rehearsal the other day. I…"

"You yelled at him?"

"Oh yeah… after the comment about me handling more than one guy at a time… When I left the stage I stopped and told him not to fuck with me… among other things."

"Go you!"

I smiled, "Yeah. He pissed me off…"

"Me too… he shouldn’t have said that…"

I shrugged, "Yeah I know, but I think we’re okay again. We love each other too much to keep fighting you know?"

He nodded, "Can I ask a question?"

"Can’t you always?" I smiled.

He smiled, "Yeah… So, does AJ know about what happened between you and Nick?"

I sighed and shook my head, "No. He knows that there’s something that happened and that it’s what caused us to kind of lose touch for a while there. But he doesn’t know the details. I don’t know… part of me doesn’t know if he needs to know. I mean, sure Nicky is AJ’s friend and brother… but it was just one time you know? It’s not like we had this ongoing affair. We spent one night together. I’m sure AJ has had plenty of one night stands that I don’t know about."

"I’m sure he does… but were any of them with people that you know?"

"Could be…" I shrugged. "He doesn’t even know about our night of passion…"

Kevin laughed loud and tipped his head back, "Night of passion? Oh god that’s corny…"

"Night of fucking up against a wall?" I grinned.

"Better… And I know what you mean. But I also wonder what it might do if he finds out from Nick but not you."

"I’ve thought about that…" I said as I looked down at the hem of my jeans and picked at them. "I don’t want to hurt him, Kev. I just don’t know what will hurt more. Telling him that I had one night stands once upon a time with two of his best friends, or not telling him and having him find out. I mean, you’re not a threat to him. I don’t think telling him about you would even make him flinch. But Nick is young and single and clearly still flirtatious with me." Kevin nodded, "Tell me this… if Kristen came to you while you were dating and confided in you saying that she’d slept with two of the guys on separate occasions before she was even dating you… what would you think?"

He thought about my question and then looked at me, "I don’t know. I’d like to think that I’d be able to understand that the past was the past and that she was in my bed so it didn’t matter who she’d been with. But I also think that it might kind of hurt knowing that two of my best friends knew the woman that I loved in a very intimate way that should be only for me to know…"

I sighed again, "Exactly. So if you had the choice of knowing that, or not knowing it at all, which would you choose?"

"Probably not knowing."

"Yeah…" I bit my lip and looked around the bus. "Been ten minutes yet?"

He checked his watch, "Nine…"

"Choir Boy to Sexy Shutterbug!" we heard being yelled over the CB and laughed.

"Oh shit…" I laughed and we ran up to the front of the bus. "Sexy Shutterbug to Choir Boy… what’s up sweetie?"

Kevin stood watching me holding back his laughter and I grinned as we listened, "Not only am I soaked from head to toe but I now have piss all over my feet!"

Kevin, the bus driver and I laughed and then I shushed them, "What happened honey?"

"Don’t ‘honey’ me you little shit… I know you did this."

"Did what?"

Brian groaned into the CB and we laughed, "You started a war young lady… watch your back…"

"Swivel Hips here… I’ll second that."

"Captain Crayola agrees too," AJ added in a ‘so not amused’ voice.

I giggled and looked at Kevin, "Rut ro, Rorge…"

Kevin cracked up and shook his head, "We’re in trouble…"

I nodded and spoke into the CB, "I know not what you’re talking about, over…"

"Bullshit! You and your little bus mate over there did this, I know you did."

Kevin and I laughed together, "Oh yeah? Prove it…"

"Y’all both better run fast when these busses stop," Brian said with a laugh.

"Come and get me Choir Boy…" I giggled. "Over."

"Oh the war is on… It’s so on… over."

I looked at Kevin and made a face, "We’re fucked…"

"Oh yeah…" he laughed. "We better call Nick, we're going to need another person on our side..."